I just wanted to remark that there is already the onlinestatus module (http://drupal.org/project/onlinestatus) who does something similar already. Or is there a difference?

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Arto’s picture

Arto commented
Title: module duplication » Relationship to Onlinestatus module
Assigned: Unassigned » Arto
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Hi Thomas,

The Skype Status module was created chiefly as a simple first technology demonstration of the upcoming RDF API for Drupal 6.x. So, it's not really in competition with any previous module.

That said, I could think of some differences with the Onlinestatus module, including:

  • this module is much smaller and simpler, and available for Drupal 6.x right now
  • this module works based on custom user profile fields (i.e. using the core Profile module), whereas the Online Status module adds fields that can't be modified by the administrator
  • this module retrieves online status messages in the natural language matching users' settings (where possible)
  • the output of this module is fully themeable, whereas Onlinestatus is hardcoded to use image buttons
  • this module defines a trigger that fires when the users' Skype status changes, allowing administrators to set up custom action-based workflows (new feature of Drupal 6.0)